Aurora Borealis May 10: A Northern Lights Extravaganza

As a quick update: All of these images were taken on the night of May 10-11, 2024. on San Juan Island WA. We were taken by surprise in the middle of our vacation when it was announced there was to be an aurora display that would likely be visible from our location. What an understatement! What we witnessed was simply out of this world. We saw colors I did not know existed in the auroras, especially the light pinks and, of all things, orange (neon). There were four of us on the grounds at the Trumpeter Inn during the "show". I was the only one with a DSLSR camera so the others would see something interesting and I would point my camera in that direction and take a timed exposer. Most were in the 15 to 20 second length.

At one point, Jan looked up straight overhead and saw something that was quite unusual; it looked like some kind of convergence. I pointed the camera overhead and took this picture, which I find startling. This was taken with a 16mm wide angle lens that has a 107 degree angle of view which means a pretty big area of the sky is represented in this image. As an aside, when first looking at the aurora your eyes are seeing mostly in black and white so what you observe looks like white clouds in the sky. What Jan saw were the apparent white clouds converging. The reason for this is because the cones in our eyes, the part of the eye that perceives color, are turned off in low light. You are then seeing with the rods in your eyes and they perceive the color as white. The camera has no such limitation so it photographs the colors that we cannot see.

Five minutes later I took this image of the same area in the sky as the previous picture. The aurora is constantly changing and pulsing such that every image you capture is unique. This is one of my favorite shots of the night in part because of all of the hues it displays but also because it is such a mystery as to why there is such a seeming convergence at this one overhead location.

As the night continued the displays of color kept going. Above you see the setting moon in the lower left corner. This image is looking to the northwest. I was moving all around the grounds at the Trumpeter Inn looking for new compositions. After getting many mostly sky shots I started searching for possible images with some recognizable foreground interest. I will share some of those in my next post.

I hope you enjoy these images.

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Family Life Of Red Foxes

The family life of a red fox is a joy to observe. The kits are very much like puppies, jumping on and chasing each other almost the entire day. Of particular interest is how the Vixens teach the kits to eventually become self sufficient around their food supply. There are two vixen in this family unit, the mother and grandmother, and I can not tell them apart. The kits you see here are still suckling from their mother. But by this time in their young lives she is well on the way introducing them to game. In the beginning she will stash the game, encouraging the kits to forage for it. The next step in the process you can see here, where she brings game directly to the kits. Here she is dropping a rabbit for them. At this stage in the teaching she has killed the rabbit. The next stage will be for her to bring them live game. The little black one grabs the rabbit and makes a run for it getting away from his siblings. A...

Red Foxes

I had never experienced anything quite like photographing red foxes. I was with them nearly all day, for three days in a row. I was so taken by them, especially the way they related to each other. Above is the dog fox, the adult male of the group, with one of his offsrping, a female kit fox. In this family group there were two vixen, one was the grandmother, the other the mother of three kits. The adult females attended the den all day with one or the other going off to hunt, returning with food for the kits. Missing most of the day was the dog fox and when he would return the kits all gravitated to him. All of the kits seemed to adore the dog fox but the moments between him and his daughter were especially touching. What a gorgeous, photogenic animal he is. When I returned a year later he was still there and there was a whole new brood of kits. I am hoping to return again this year having missed last year due to a bout ...

Art Display At The Center For Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

The Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa, has a wonderful program that encourages artist members to display their work. The work is hung in the Social Hall and typically has about twenty pieces hanging for two months at a time. On March 1rst I will be hanging several images taken in Iceland, along with some wildlife images, including foxes, coyotes, eagles and kites. I will also have some paintings by my mother and two of my own. I am pretty excited about this showing. One of the pictures I will have in the show is of Godafoss, a beautiful waterfall in Iceland. When I first saw pictures of this waterfall I knew I wanted to go to Iceland to take pictures of it. This composition required gettin into some very cold water.

Notes To My Mother

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